


Junk and Ash

by lovehugsandcandy



Category: Ride or Die (Visual Novel)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2020-03-06 01:52:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18841225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovehugsandcandy/pseuds/lovehugsandcandy
Summary: Colt returns to the garage one last time.





	Junk and Ash

This is stupid. Colt knows this is stupid. You never want to make the obvious play and this is nothing if not obvious.

He looks up and down the street, again. Dark. Still. Other than a car backfiring four minutes ago, he’s heard nothing, seen no one, for the last 11 minutes.

He told himself he would wait 15 but the standing, the waiting…not his strength. He knows, God he knows how dumb this is but he’ll be quick. Just a quick look around and then out, gone before The Brotherhood shows up.

With one last look, a quick dart of his head, he pushes himself off the wall, out of the darkness, and crosses the street, ducking under the caution tape and crossing into the soot and debris. It still smells like smoke here, faint but enough to burn his lungs, evoke the memories of that awful night. 

He shakes his head. He can’t think; he has to move. The concrete floor has soot everywhere, outlines of footsteps still visible, even in the dark. It’s creepy, the walls almost entirely gone, some piles of bricks rising from the exterior. The fire wasn’t hot enough to burn the metal, so most of the tool boxes are still standing. He runs his hand over a lift; though the metal is there, the electronics have undoubtedly been destroyed. It’s all junk now. All of it. Ruined, useless, lost junk. Him included.

Further back, into the one place he knows he needs to go, the one place he wonders if he can bear. Past the skeletons of cars and debris, back as far as he can go, bricks barely standing, he walks into his dad’s office.

He needs to sit, needs a minute, he would sit, but there’s no chair, barely anything left here. Anything wood is long gone, the chairs, table, top of the desk. All the papers are ash; he picks up a pile to watch it fall through his fingers. The memories here, fuck, the memories. Far too few, not enough time spent with his dad. He feels a flare of anger at all that he missed while he was away, all the time the crew had with him, the time  _Logan_ got with him. He makes a fist, knuckles white. He can’t think about that now. He has to move.

He starts looking; there’s not much here, but he needs to look, to search. The filing cabinets were open so all the papers are gone. A few keys in the bottom of a drawer, useless now. The safe, stuck in the corner, relatively untouched, but he knows what’s in there. He doesn’t need any of it; there’s no MPC anymore.

The last place is the desk. The top was destroyed, burnt up, covering everything in a thin layer of ash; it’s easy to peer over the top and just start looking, inside. There’s not much there, ash, ash, and more ash, feeling around in the dark when he stops. His hand has hit something, irregular shape, a piece of plastic? How? He pulls it out and examines; it’s pitch black inside but he needs no light to know what this is. 

_Pop kept this?_

This stupid piece of shit? He looks, squinting into the darkness, at the stupid sombrero hat, the mustache on the cactus. He chuckled, blinking hard, trying and failing to keep his eyes dry. Of all the things he could keep, this? This was Colt’s first dash ornament, from his first car, before he because obsessed with the bike and it’s roar and it’s siren call of freedom. He hadn’t seen the cactus in years, didn’t know or care where it ended up, but his pop?

He flicked it with a finger, watching the stupid plant shake in his hand. He almost put it back, in the hollows of the desk, when he paused, considering. He didn’t need it on his bike but maybe, someone with a car? Someone with a car might want it, someone with a pink import and a colorful sleeve, someone who made him feel like it wasn’t just him against the world.

He shoved it in his pocket, quickly. He knew his time was up. With one last look around, one last check for something, anything else of his dad, he snuck out, slinking through the street, back to the shadows, pausing at the corner for one last look. One last tear. Then, off into the night, before The Brotherhood could catch him, before the memories overtook him. Time to move.


End file.
